Searching for Beauty: The Life of Millicent Rogers

by Cherie Burns

The life of Millicent Rogers is a tale of money, sex, and style. This is the first biography of the Standard Oil heiress, beautiful, well-bred and wild, who made her mark on the worlds of high society and haute couture in New York, Europe, and Hollywood as a preamble to her romantic reinvention in Taos, New Mexico in the 1940s. In Taos she became the creator and exporter of southwestern style to New York, and the classic American western style that she popularized extends to the present. Her life story is of a beautiful and intelligent woman that begins in the Age of Innocence, arcs on a trajectory of intense and indulgent living, and ends in a southwestern idyll of liberation and free expression. It is one woman’s relentless reinvention and personal metamorphosis through her pursuit of style and beauty.

Cherie Burns is the author of THE GREAT HURRICANE: 1938(Grove/Atlantic, 2005) about which Jonathan Yardley of The Washington Post wrote: “Her own very good book is sure to help keep the terrible storm in its proper place in New England’s memory..” and Liz Smith, in The Daily News, “A must if you care about brilliant reporting…” Burns’s previous book STEPMOTHERHOOD: How to Survive Without Feeling Frustrated, Left Out or Wicked (HarperCollins/Three Rivers Press) has remained in print for 20 years. Forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press is her next book, DIVING FOR STARFISH.

The House of Boivin, purveyor of sumptuous jewelry, created five ruby and amethyst starfish brooches in the years before WWII which have moved beneath the surface of public awareness ever since, bought and sold in the utmost secrecy. DIVING FOR STARFISH (St. Martins, 2018) is Cherie Burns’s chronicle of these artifacts, the secrets they've held in the 75 years they've adorned the high societies of New York and Paris, and the larger-than-life personalities who feature in their tale.